Tony Khan’s AEW “More Like 2019 WWE” As Chaos Runs Wild

Tony Khan is under fire for seemingly taking his cue from WWE in 2019 as plans for Double Or Nothing changed frequently on the day of the show.

Live events and television can often see changes take place at the last minute but it seems in AEW, these late-in-the-day changes are becoming a more frequent beast.

A frequent criticism of Vince McMahon under WWE towards the end of his time in charge was how shows could be written and then ripped up on the day of them when McMahon saw plans leading to completely new shows emerging, a lack of continuity, and sometimes advertised matches not taking place with no explanation.

Tony Khan Having To Beg AEW Stars To Attend Shows Due To Late Changes

Writing on the Wrestling Observer subscriber board, Bryan Alvarez stated his belief that “AEW today is a billion times better than WWE in 2019” but cautioned that there are similarities between Tony Khan’s company and WWE under Vince McMahon’s late leadership and they’re not good ones:

Tony switched the script on yesterday’s PPV multiple times during the afternoon. Most people, not just the wrestlers, have no idea what they’re doing until the day of the show, and sometimes not until an hour or so before the show. People are flown to towns and given nothing to do, others are begged the day before the show to please get to the town so they can do something last-minute. He knows what he wants to do for PPVs (although this often changes), but as far as week-to-week TV, everything is booked show-to-show.

For most people, he’s [Tony Khan] incredibly difficult to get hold of. In some ways, it legitimately is more like 2019 WWE than it is 2019 AEW, where he was much easier to get hold of, he had very complex long-term storytelling, many people had a good idea of what they were doing and where things were going, and often most of the following week’s entire Dynamite card was booked and announced before the previous week’s Dynamite had even ended (remember when Excalibur would run down two dozen matches in 30 seconds for the following week?).

It’s night and day the changes, and people who work for the company, in all roles from the wrestlers to the office, talk about it ALL THE TIME.

As well as the late changes, some in AEW are said to be frustrated with Tony Khan over the company’s struggling live attendance.